Page 71 of Love's a Witch
“I’m meant to get her to leave town. This snow is too much. Bloody hell, mate. Scotland has unpredictable weather, but this is beyond anything we’ve dealt with before. My job would be to make sure they leave. It’s what my parents want as well.”
Rab snorted again, taking a sip. He well knew how domineering my parents were.
“I’m sure they’ve offered an opinion?”
“Naturally. The official decree is to run the MacGregors out of town. Like, yesterday.”
“Is that your plan, then?” Rab looked down at the bar.
“Aye. And no.” I sighed, running a hand through my hair. “I don’t reckon I can do it. There has to be another way.”
“You want to help solve the curse,” Liam said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“I do at that. The issue is, I’m just not sure how long it will take. I may have a revolt on my hands here soon enough if I don’t enforce their leave.”
“I’ll help.” Liam met my eyes. “I talk to everyone here. I’ll put in a good word for them.”
“You will?” Some of the tension that banded my chest eased. “That might make a bit of a difference.”
“Aye, nae bother, lad.” Liam shrugged. “It’s easy enough to remind people that it’s not their fault they were cursed. I know I moan aboutthe snow and whatnot, but still. They’ve been dealt a bad hand. Would be good to remind a few people of that.”
“I can help too.” Rab tapped his fingers against his glass. “Unofficially.”
“Does that mean you want Lyra to stay?” I asked.
“Don’t go there.” Rab shook his head, and I eased off. He’d talk when he wanted to talk, and that was the way of it.
“Does your mum know you fancy Sloane?” Liam asked, picking up the darts and motioning toward the board.
“It’s none of her business.” It wasn’t, that was the truth of it, but Briarhaven was a very small town, and I didn’t care to hear my mother’s complaints about the gossip.
“And when has that ever stopped her before?” Liam asked, hitting a bull’s-eye for his warm-up shot.
“Never,” I admitted, wincing as I hit a three.
CHAPTER NINETEENSloane
I felt like I was unraveling at the seams.
It had been a week since the coven meeting about the curse, and in that time, my magick had continued to go off the rails. The revelation about our father had rocked my sisters and me, and with the added stress of the snow continuing to pile up, I was like an unwatched pot on the stove, ready to boil over.
Thank the goddess for my sweet grandmother. Broca was doing her best to make me see the levity in my ever-changing magick. Her favorite had been the day when my magick turned every light bulb into a disco ball, and ’70s music had blared through the house. I would have been annoyed by it, but it had made it easier to get her out of her chair and moving around, which was exactly what her physical therapist required for her to move forward with her hip recovery. We’d had to badger her into the local gym each day, since walking outside was out of the question with the heavy snowfall, and she was slowly making strides—pun intended.
One morning, we were busy making decorations for the Pinecones & Peppermint Fest, tying pinecones onto twine, and wrapping candy canes in bows, when all of the pinecones had turned intohedgehogs and chaos had ensued. I was never going to look at a pinecone the same way again.
Another day, which still made me hot and bothered when I thought about it, my shadow had become extra clingy. All day long, it had tripped me up, like a scared child hanging on to my leg every time I made a move. It had also happened to be the day that I’d gone into town for a few things for Broca from Pixie Dust and had run into Knox on the street. Quite literally run into him, because my shadow had lost its mind, apparently, and pushed me right into his chest. He’d caught me, and once he’d realized my issue that day, he’d insisted on carrying me home and installing me in my bedroom until it was safe for me to move again. And had decided to babysit me in the process.
Knowing the house was full of people made our kisses all the more stealthy in my bedroom, and even though I had put up a small fight about not wanting to be with him, my resolve was weakening.Anyone’sresolve would weaken around that man. His biggest flaw that I could find at the moment was his absolute confidence that things would work out in his favor. And as much as I tried to disavow him of the idea of us as a couple, somehow I still found myself wrapped around him every time I saw him, my lips on his, my body aching for more.
We hadn’t crossed that line yet, but I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold out. Knox was cheerfully open to telling anyone and everyone about his interest in me, which I found beyond irritating, while I continued to grumble and ignore any questions that came my way about Briarhaven’s favorite golden boy. I’m sure that didn’t endear me to anyone, but I was not used to answering questions about my private life. Particularly when I didn’t even know the answers myself.
It turned out, Broca hadn’t known our father was still around, either, or at least that’s what she told us, and I believed her. She had nothing to gain from hiding that information, and she’d been just as upset with our mother for hiding that from us. As far as she wasconcerned, children had a right to know about their parents and make their own decisions, and Mum shouldn’t have kept our father’s whereabouts a secret. I wondered if he knew we were back.
We discussed going to the hills, just my sisters and me, to see if we could find him. There were just a couple small issues with that plan. The first being that the snow was growing worse every day, and none of us were experienced in winter hiking or camping. It would be foolish beyond belief to just trudge up into the mountains and try to find this man. And second, we realized that we didn’t really know if he wanted to see us anyway. If he’d wanted to, wouldn’t he have reached out? Even though Nova was still pretty mad about it, we’d agreed to wait on any decision about moving forward on trying to find him until we could seek out more information.
I’d yet to confront Mum about any of this. Lyra and Nova wanted me to say something, but a part of me was beginning to realize that the less contact I had with her, and the more I distanced myself from her narrative, the better I was becoming at making decisions that suited me. And, at the end of the day, if we decided to stay in Briarhaven, our relationship with our mother would remain fractured anyway. What the three of us needed to do was to reach these conclusions about our own future for ourselves, without the lens of a bitter and toxic mother coloring our views.
All of this meant I had a lot of big feelings pinging around inside me, and no particular outlet for them at the moment. So why not try more spell work? It would either go entirely off the rails or potentially solve everything. With that in mind, I’d summoned my family to the living room.
